Mark Xavier Zaleski

Mark Zaleski serves as Partner at Hearn Capital. He is an Angel investor, consultant, senior executive and non-executive company Director specializing in multi-country high-growth internet/digital media businesses. Since 2007, Mark is the main investor and the Chairman of HES NV, the leading online movie rental site in the Benelux. From 2011 until it was sold in 2013 (to Cyrte Investments), he was an advisor to the Supervisory Board of Emesa N.V. the leading e-commerce site in the Netherlands for travel and leisure packages. He has invested in several other high-growth internet businesses across Europe such as QXL Ricardo (sold to Naspers), Dailymotion (sold to France Telecom), Shutl (sold to eBay Inc), Limundo, Kupinda, GOOM, Digitouch, Show-My-Homework, Wave Optics and Wikimart. He is a Board Member of Satchel, GoCardless and Wave Optics. He is also an Investment Partner in PROfounders Capital and Passion Capital and a Limited Partner in BBV's Fund II. He was Chairman and CEO of Paris-based Dailymotion from 2007 to 2009. Under his leadership the company became the world's number one independent video-sharing site with over 60 million unique visitors and 1 billion video views per month. He helped raise €25M in new capital, set the strategy, led the legitimisation of its existence and business model, grew the company rapidly across the globe (at the time of his leaving it was the fastest growing online video sharing site) and led in monetisation putting significant distance in all areas to other independent competitors. From 2000, he was CEO for QXL Ricardo plc (QXL.L), a leader of online consumer trading platforms. He led the company to profitability and several clear market leadership positions. QXL was the best performing stock on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 and the LSE's Main Market in 2004. It was sold for nearly £1 billion in 2007. Before joining QXL, he was President of Operations for California-based Webvan Inc (WBVN), launching the company's operations, leading 4000 employees and generating $300M in annualized revenues. With three other officers of the company, he raised nearly $600M including the Company's IPO, valuing the company then at $8.3 Billion. He has also held senior executive positions in the European operations of Federal Express Corporation and The Nielsen Company. Zaleski has a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Oxford. He was featured in Dan Matthews' book 'New Rules of Business: Leading entrepreneurs reveal their secrets for success' and is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and a Fellow of the RSA.